MDT

For many years the “OEM” folder has been a method for copying files to the local hard drive of a machine while it was being built.

The idea was simply that anything in a particular folder would be copied to a specific drive during the Windows installation process.

The $OEM$ folder method is no longer available to modern Windows deployments.  The next best thing is a replacement process using MDT.

Bootcamp Is the application provided by Apple to allow 64bit Windows to run on an Apple produced machine.   The application is provided in a zip format that calls an MSI with the current version being 5.1.5652, available from http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macoscomponents

One of the biggest problems with the use of “fat” Windows Images is accidental contamination of a production Image.  A seemingly minor update can have unexpected consequences when background processes also make unnoticed changes.  The only way of being certain of how a WIM Image has been created is to fully automate the process with Task Sequences so accidents can’t happen & an audit trail is left behind.

User State Migration (USMT) is a flexible framework for controlling how user data is managed during machine rebuilds.  It uses XML for declaring rules over data is backed up and restored. 

Every “component” has a unique display name and when being custom developed by administrators, they will generally consist of “documents” as a data type (just as the following role is likely to be “data” manipulation too.

Generally, using WMI to query a mainboard and determine driver sets is quite a straightforward exercise.  We can easily run up a tool like MSInfo32.exe to determine the Manufacturer and Model of a machine and these same BIOS files can be used in a Task Sequence to allow a driver set to be used.  The Image above shows a series of models that are available for the Manufacturer “Dell Inc.”

Recently I was forced to look at how Microsoft’s approach to factory pre-loading Windows has evolved.  After coming to terms with the earlier (and legacy) “breadcrumbs” approach, I was surprised as the polished simplicity of the Deployment Toolkit’s “LiteTouch OEM” sequence and even more impressed with the approach from SCCM 2012.